MERIDEN -- A Meriden woman facing deportation was granted a temporary reprieve Monday.
Nelly Cumbicos can be at home with her family after spending the last five days at the First and Summerfield United Methodist Church in New Haven.
Set to be deported by federal immigration officials last Wednesday, and despite having a plane ticket back to her home country of Ecuador, Cumbicos decided to seek sanctuary inside the church instead.
Cumbicos is currently appealing a deportation order from 2002, which she only recently discovered.
In a decision that pleasantly surprised her and many of the activists fighting to keep her in the U.S., ICE officials told her they're not going to enforce deportation while her legal appeals from the 2002 deportation case, are pending.
According to a GoFundMe page for Cumbicos, she arrived to the United States 18-years ago to be with her family who had escaped Ecuador years earlier under death threats.
"While crossing the border, she and some other young women were kidnapped by banditos and held hostage for money. As the women were being relocated to another hiding spot, a motor vehicle accident occurred, and the police rescued the women," the GoFundMe page reads. "Because the women were undocumented, the border patrol got involved and Nelly was relocated to CT to be closer to her family with instructions that ICE would be getting in touch with her. This never happened."